The focus of the FA Cup semi finals will probably fall on the Manchester derby about 95% and probably rightly so for the neutral point of view. However I would like to think those true neutrals will be routing for Bolton to lift the FA Cup this year. With City in the process of buying success, Stoke being just horrid and United being United a team who is clearly making a conscious effort to improve the aesthetics of their game is surely the way to go.
The performance against an admittedly under strength Birmingham City was quite brilliant in its own right. The return to the team and to form of Chung-Yong Lee is a sigh that is long overdue for us Trotters being subjected to a half arsed Petrov on one wing and fatty Taylor or an out of position Elmandog on t’other. SKD absolutely beasted the Brum defence and the sight of him smashing someone into the net ala Lofthouse in the final would make me excited in my underpants.
Of course to get there we first must overcome Stoke in the semi at Wembley (I won’t even go into that farce). I hate Stoke.
From the sight of a handful of their appalling fans clambering over the Reebok partition this season to attempt to attack our chavvy corner of fans, smacking a female steward in the process, to the vomit of a goal Robert Huth scored at the weekend. They are just full of woe. Should we lose to them at that stage of the competition I will be a tad upset to say the least.
It seems to be a case of the two naughty friends who used to cause havoc around the town by throwing, launching and biffing teams into submission. At some point a local hard-but-nice-man got hold of us and Stoke and pinned us up against the wall, telling us that we’re nobody’s favourite kid and if we carry on in this vein someone is going to give us a good hiding. We went away, thought about what we had been doing and appointed Owen Coyle. Stoke went away, bought John Carew, started diving for penalties and shunned those who tried to help them change. Now we meet in a battle to be the most ignored team in FA Cup final build up for a long while and good lord I hope it goes thee way of the reformed character.
On a side note, The Sun claimed that we played Ivan Klasnic, famously lazy striker, centre midfield on Saturday. Johan Elmander, striker who has played on the right for the last 2 months up front and Stuart Holden (swoon) ever present in the middle of the park for us this season, on the right. What a rag.